SoundCloud For Artists: Prices, Costs, Royalties & Hidden Fees

The free plan is called SoundCloud Next.

You can upload up to 3 hours of your music for free on SoundCloud. But, unless you choose one of the monthly plans, you wont be able to monetize your music.

With the free plan, your music will only be on SoundCloud, and you wont earn any money from listeners streaming your tracks.

You can still add a "buy link" to your track, which enables you to redirect listeners to your website or to any other marketplaces, such as Bandcamp.

SoundCloud has a total of 3 plans you can choose from, 1 free one (see above) and 2 monthly paid ones.

• The first monthly one is called SoundCloud Next Plus.

For a flat fee of $2.50 per month, SoundCloud will send your music to streaming platforms like Spotify and allow you to enable monetization on the tracks you have on SoundCloud itself.

SoundCloud Next Plus will cost you $30 per year.

Note: The 3 hours track limit still applies in SoundCloud Next Plus.

May 2023: You can still get this (yearly only), see the update note above the table of contents.

• The second monthly one is called SoundCloud Next Pro.

For a flat fee of $11 per month, you will be able to upload unlimited tracks, a promotional 36% discount applies for a yearly purchase.

SoundCloud Next Pro will cost you $85 per year if you pay yearly or $132 per year if you pay montly.

So yes, like in my previous article about the Distrokid and Tunecore unlimited plans; SoundCloud also has one.

Choosing any of the 2 monthly plans, SoundCloud will monetize your music on streaming platforms and on the website itself. You will get 80% of the revenue.

The best thing about this, is that it also includes the YouTube Content ID. Both SoundCloud Plus and Pro will get your music in the YouTube CID and allow you a total (per-track) control over claims right from your dashboard.

This means that you have a total control over which videos (either yours or from other people using your music) you wish to whitelist. Only Distrokid gives a similar per-video control.

This part is a game changer and very important for the payout comparison. Read carefully.

SoundCloud is a little bit out-of-the-box with a special system of fan-powered royalties.

With any other distributor, you can't monetize on SoundCloud, only choosing a monthly plan will allow you to do so.

Here is how the royalties work:

• If someone listen to your music and only your music: you get a 100% share of their paid subscription.

• If someone listen to your music and other artists music: you get a certain % based on how long that person has listened to you.

Example: User A spent 1h listening to your music, 1h listening to other musicians. You get a 50% share.

Example 2: User B spent 1h listening to your music, 9h listening to other musiciens. You get a 10% share (1h of a total of 1h+9h=10h is 10%).

SoundCloud will take 20% of everything you earn.

You will keep 80% of the revenue.

There are no exceptions, or any other fees, on top of this 80/20 split in addition to the price that you already pay monthly for their service.

SoundCloud also has a publishing service, where no cut percentage is specified. You can apply by filling a form. I don't know what kind of "deal" you get, because they do not disclose this information anywhere.

Situation from the last article:

"Let's say that your average payout per stream is $0.003, that means that you get roughly $0.01 every 3 streams.

This is your first year and your first album. You got a combined 30,000 streams on all platforms (excluding socials), making your payout $100. And you got a combined 30,000 streams on social platforms, adding another $100.

Your total payout is $200"

These were the final results for each distributor, after all fees were deducted:

• Distrokid: $180.01

• Tunecore: $165.01

• CdBaby: $151.01

In this exact same scenario, here is what you get from SoundCloud:

• You choose Next Plus ($30/year): you get 200-30-(200*0.2)=$130

• You choose Next Pro ($85/year): you get 200-85-(200*0.2)=$75

Note: 200*0.2=40, this is the 80/20 revenue split.

Hold on, where are the streams from SoundCloud itself?

Here we are in the important part, about the royalties that you should have read carefully, because I marked it as such.

Repeating this: No other distributor can monetize your music on SoundCloud but SoundCloud itself.

You got a total of 60k streams that don't include your SoundCloud streams. I will take a random 10k streams as reference, which may or may not be accurate, but you'll see the results with that amount.

You have now 10k extra streams, worth $33 that nobody outside of SoundCloud itself can monetize, because it's on their own platform, with their own custom fan royalty shares. 

Note: The average per stream with their custom system is still the same as the competition. This number includes the % they take, so 10k streams are worth roughly $33.

This is what you actually get now:

• You choose Next Plus: you get 130+33=$163

• You choose Next Pro: you get 75+33=$108

The streams you get on the platform itself are very important for the final payout, you can see that only 10k streams added $33 already, 20k streams would add $66, 30k streams would add $99.

Choosing SoundCloud for music distribution or not will depend on the amount of streams you have on it. A high amount of streams on the platform will make it better then the competition, a low amount will make it worse.

In almost all cases, there is a little trick that I thought about that will allow you to maximize your earnings:

• First, use Tunecore or Distrokid as your main distributor (keep 100% of sales & downloads instead of 80%)

• Then, add SoundCloud as a standalone without distributing your music to other platforms, only to monetize on SoundCloud itself (once you have a high enough amount of streams on it, to break even on the subscription cost)

This is a win-win situation and will allow you to keep 100% (excluding social platforms) while also being able to earn money from your streams on SoundCloud.

To break-even on the Next Plus subscription ($30/year), you will first need about 10k streams per year (valued at $33) on SoundCloud.

May 2023: Once they discontinue Next Plus this wont work anymore. It will still be possible on Next Pro, but to even out there, it will require way more streams (about 26k).